Back On Duty

My notebook told me that I last did local birding on 16th January before the holiday to Lanzarote. It was time today to find some winter clothes, check out the local scene and forget the exotic birds and tropical sunshine of the Canary Islands. 

There was a full moon and as the sun rose I waited at the appointed spot for a Barn Owl to appear but none did so I hightailed it to Conder Green. 

Full Moon over Pilling

I thought the pool might be somewhat frozen following recent days of zero temperatures so I was pleasantly surprised to see lots of wildfowl scattered across the still open water. There was a good count of 1 Goldeneye, 6 Little Grebe, 29 Wigeon, 52 Tufted Duck, 42 Mute Swan, 4 Greylag and 1 Black Swan, and then dead centre of the circulating throng, a single Pochard. 

The Pochard is now so scarce in our area that to see even a solitary one is something of an occasion although I did think that it was here by way of tagging onto the unusually high count of Tufted Duck displaced from Glasson Dock half a mile away. Two Lapwing and 1 Oystercatcher on the island clearly have designs on the usual breeding spots. 

Pochard

In the roadside creeks - 100+ Teal, 1 Spotted Redshank, 1 Snipe and “several” of both Curlew and Redshank. Towards the car park and alongside the road I found 4 Goldfinch, 10 Chaffinch and a pair of Pied Wagtails, together with good numbers of Starlings and House Sparrows in the vicinity of the farm buildings. 

 Spotted Redshank

Chaffinch

Starling

While the shallow pool at Conder Green was unfrozen after driving the half a mile to Glasson Dock I was surprised to see partial ice-cover, thus explaining why so many Tufted Duck had chosen to leave here, their normally preferred location. The "tuftie" count here was down to 12 with a similar count of 11 Goldeneye and a normal total of 45+ Coot. 

Goldeneye

Goldeneye

Glasson Dock

I drove back to Pilling, passing several thousand Pink-footed Geese two fields back from the road and at a dangerous spot to park on the infamous A588 so I carried on to Fluke Hall. Lots of Snowdrops littered the woodland but I didn’t see too many birds, just a couple of Redwings, 2 Great-spotted Woodpeckers, a single Jay and several Goldfinch. I’m fairly certain I heard a couple of Siskin calls but a tractor went by and the chance was gone. 

Snowdrops

The incoming tide began to drop a few birds into the thawing fields, in particular a nice count of 700 Lapwing, 260 Black-tailed Godwit, 70 Golden Plover, 70 Redshank and 45 Oystercatcher. The godwits tried to feed quite close to the road where they quickly found themselves disturbed by passing traffic. A flock of Black-tailed Godwits against a blue sky makes for a spectacular sight, the striking black & white configuration of their plumage when they fly being quite unique and unmistakeable in the world of wading birds. 

Black-tailed Godwits

Black-tailed Godwits

In the distance I could see the geese had been disturbed from their field inland of the sea wall and were now flying out to the safety of the salt marsh. From Lane Ends car park and in the foreground of the picture below, a minimum of 7000 Pink-footed Geese plus 2 Barnacle Goose and a single White-fronted Goose. In the background, Heysham Power Station. 

Pink-footed Geese, Pilling Marsh

A good morning of birding, and as is often the case, there’s nothing quite like birding one’s local patch. Who needs Lanzarote?

Linking today to Anni's Birding and Eileen's Saturday Blog.

Play It Cool

I think some birds are responding to the continuing cold weather because on my Knott End to Pilling round this morning I found a few changes to the usual scene. Although the mercury was in the red this morning, it isn’t yet down to the forecast for tonight of minus 10 degrees.

As I passed the abandoned building site at Knott End I could see a lady at the bus stop looking up at the steelwork next to the Bourne Arms, and I reckoned the Black Redstart was still about. After I parked up and went for a peek the woman had got on her bus but the redstart was still there, high up and partly hidden by the steelwork, but as I watched the bird bobbing about it flew across the road and landed on a bungalow roof opposite and then down into someone’s garden. A “good” bird for a garden list, but I don’t think you can count birds seen in other people’s gardens, unless someone knows otherwise.

Black Redstart

I found a couple of rooks in the car park, birds probably from the rookery above the village library. One of the Rooks bore a metal ring, but the bird with the ring proved too wary for me to read the inscription. I imagine there aren’t too many ringers who climb into tall rookeries in order to ring young rooks, so maybe someone has been ringing “branchies” in recent years; stand-by for one of Another Bird Blog’s occasional forays into things culinary. “Branchie” is an old name given to young rooks which leave the nest early and clamber about on nearby branches pending their fledging, until that is an unseasonal wind springs up and deposits them on the ground below the rookery. In some years I used to find a few young rooks under the Singleton Hall rookery and then ring them as 1Js before putting them back on the highest branch I could reach. “Branchies” were also the probable origin of the ancient verse, “Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” as young Rook meat is said to be very savoury with a similar taste to Wood Pigeon meat.

Rook
Ringed Rook

The stubble at Fluke Hall Lane is frozen solid, and apart from the Jackdaws, there’s nothing much to report, just the usual half a dozen Tree Sparrows and Reed Buntings around the Hi-fly track.

Reed Bunting

The east pool at Lane Ends is now frozen solid, with not a single duck there, just the Mallards on the small patch of unfrozen water on the west pool. A walk through the plantation, taking care not to flatten the Snowdrops, gave a count of 15 + Blackbirds, 2 Redwing, 4 Moorhen and 12+ Chaffinch.

Snowdrops
Lane Ends - Frozen
Chaffinch

As a change of scenery I walked east along the sea wall and logged 3 Pale-bellied Brent Geese, 18 Greylag, with 8 Little Egret and 2 Grey Heron flushed from the inland ditches where drainage water still trickles. It was up here I found a party of 18 Meadow Pipits, and on the inland field, 80 Black-tailed Godwit, 5 Golden Plover, 10 Dunlin and 300 Curlew.

Greylag

Opposite Gulf Lane was a huge concentration of Pink-footed Geese, maybe 7,000 in all, but alongside the stretch of road where to stop is dangerous, as I found out when I drove slowly along there later to the accompaniment of car horns and angry sideways looks. All these folk rushing about like there’s no tomorrow, why don’t they just relax, chill out and take up birding?